| 1 |
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. |
| 2 |
In the last light of day, looking round anxiously for early hunters, they drank hastily at the stream and started the climb up to their caves. They were still a hundred yards from the New Rock when the sound began. |
| 3 |
She told him she was sorry for giving him a rough day, inasmuch as she hadn't believed him. He said only that he thanked the good spirits for watching over her. He hugged her and kissed the top of her head. Somehow, she thought she would have felt better had he instead reproved her. |
| 4 |
He listened again. The whimpering began once more, rather like a miserable dog's. There was no sound of any other voice, or of anyone else coming up the stairway. Bill made up his mind. He leapt up to the broken edge of the hole in the column, switched on his torch and looked down. |
| 5 |
That rising snarl from within the dark cup stopped. Pain I could still sense, but there was something else now which I could not define. I only knew that if I crawled forward I would no longer need my staff, nor the knife at my belt. So I laid aside my shaft and went ahead. |
| 6 |
The heat in my voice startled him. It startled me. But it was there and I couldn't deny it, and once again my hands were trembling, these hands that had leapt out and away from me at the false David, even when all the other lethal power in me was kept in check. |
| 7 |
I was not really aware of having been asleep, only of being shaken roughly awake. I lay there staring up through the mosquito net at the pressure lamp on its hook in the ceiling, moths clustering thickly around it. The hand shook me again, I turned and found Mannie at my side. |
| 8 |
The sky was turning light when we went to sleep. I slept on the couch wrapped up in a couple of spare blankets. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep, but the tiredness came over me like a towering wave. I gave up and let it take me wherever it wanted. |
| 9 |
He paid for the drinks and they walked out of the bar. Now it seemed that the heat was letting up a bit and the Hudson was sending over a breeze. Going toward midnight, the streets were quieting down and it was the bars and night clubs that were getting all the play. |
| 10 |
Jack took the man's arm and piloted him away into the cover of the nearby trees. The man walked very unsteadily. He gave a groan every now and again as if it hurt him to walk. Jack felt more and more certain that he would never be able to get to the cave. |
| 11 |
I made her name as sharp a call as I could, wanting to shake her into awareness of where she was and that I was with her. Now her head jerked, turned in my direction. I saw her eyes widen and knew that the illusion which sleep had left her was breaking. |
| 12 |
He went on talking and twitching the paper. Finally he shrugged and got up from his chair. He reached over and ran a fingertip down her cheek. She jerked back. Then he opened the twisted paper and laid it carefully down in front of her. He waited, smiling. |
| 13 |
The heights on which the hold had been set was only the beginning of land which climbed. It did not snow, but the wind cut coldly. And we were glad when the unmarked trail we followed wound through woods, shelter which kept off the worst of the blasts. |
| 14 |
When she was alone she looked around the tiny chintzy room with its own doll's house bathroom, and the double bed that took up most of the floor area. She remembered his remark about calling if she needed him, and she looked up at the ceiling just as she heard him drop one of his shoes on the floor. |
| 15 |
The light was beginning to fade and he clenched his fist in excitement as he heard the notes of wailing horns carried to him on the breeze. The great column was halting for the night. One of his scouts came to a skidding stop by him, panting as he too stretched out. |
| 16 |
But I did leave Bianca alone in the shrine more and more often. Never of course did I abandon her there in the early part of the evening when she depended upon me totally to reach those places where we might hunt. On the contrary, I always took her with me. |
| 17 |
The searchlight splashed fairly into his eyes when he stuck his head and shoulders out of the escape hatch in the roof of the plane. He shielded his eyes with an arm and waved for them to take the light away. They did not take it away. The light seemed to be coming closer. |
| 18 |
He finally found enough courage to look at her. She was all the way over against the passenger door, like a scared teenager on a first date that had gone too far, and although she looked calm enough, her cheeks were fiery red and she was wiping away tears with the side of her hand. |
| 19 |
But he could not. If Linda was not just running from her own imagination, they could be watched by things from the trees. Or hunted by those to whom his calls would serve as a guide. Though the grass was so tall it was hard to tramp through, he thought he saw ahead the end of the woods. |
| 20 |
She pointed to his office door. Sam threw the door open, banging it against the wall and disturbing a raven that was perched in the brass hat rack just inside. Sam stormed over to the bird, barely resisting the urge to grab it and rip its feathers out. |
| 21 |
Had the slave known I was free, I do not think he would have touched me. He might have remained crouching in his hole, thinking what thoughts he might, but I do not think he would have dared to touch me. A male slave can be slain for touching a free woman. |
| 22 |
This caused some startled murmuring. Oliver nearly dropped me, but I straightened myself in time. It was difficult not to sneak a look at him, but I had to act as though nothing were seriously amiss. With my clean left hand, I raised the thing to my lips and pretended to drink. |
| 23 |
For a while, I was looking at the problem, I really was. But then I found myself thinking about Gillian Hathaway, and about whether she and her boyfriend Luke said I love you to each other. How did you even know if you loved another person. |
| 24 |
But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough, after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe. |
| 25 |
Breathing and wishing for things, on the other hand, was just about all that Arthur seemed to do all day. Sometimes he would wish for things so much that his breathing would get quite agitated, and he would have to go and lie down for a bit. On his own. In his small room. |
| 26 |
Evan winced and leapt away from him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him. |
| 27 |
Then something tugged at me. Hard. My eyes popped open and I saw that my tether was as taut as a steel rod, holding me securely. But the trolley seemed to me miles away. And I couldn't see any of the others even when I twisted my head to look for them. |
| 28 |
The sound was the alarm going off; it was seven o'clock. His pajamas were soaked, dripping with sweat, and his heart still pounded. Every ragged nerve throughout his body screamed for release. It would take more than a cold shower to cure this case of the shakes. |
| 29 |
He had settled fifty thousand on Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other boy - he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be even lonelier when she was gone. |
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Her former companions remained more outgoing. While Captain Langendijk was icily correct toward the agents, Rueda Suarez calculatedly condescending, and Benedetti sometimes abusive, the rest fraternized in varying degrees. Frieda von Moltke even found a long-desired sexual newness among them.